As my regular readers know, I try to provide something thought-provoking for most of my blog posts. But every so often something comes along that makes me go “wow, I really need to share this.” This is one of those times.

Like many analysts here at Forrester, I have an iPad (my own, not the company’s) which I often use for work — especially when travelling (which we do a lot). And like many people, I’ve grown used to the tactile feel of a real keyboard — so every now and then I’d yearn for a real keyboard to use with my iPad.

Being an Apple fan, I first bought the Apple Bluetooth keyboard. While this is a good keyboard, it has a couple of major flaws for my use. Firstly, it doesn’t actually hold the iPad, so you have to position your iPad somewhere you can see it while typing. For this reason you can’t easily use it anywhere there isn’t a good flat surface near you on which to stand your iPad. And secondly, it’s not very convenient to travel with as it’s so long — who wants to walk around with a sleek iPad and a huge keyboard? I needed something more compact.